You have condemned and put to death the Just One: and he resisted you not.
κατεδικασατε εφονευσατε τον δικαιον ουκ αντιτασσεται υμιν
5 Church Fathers comment on this verse
By the words, "You have killed the Righteous One," the apostle undoubtedly means Christ Himself. Yet by adding, "He does not resist you," he makes the saying general, extending it to others who suffered similar things from the Jews. Perhaps he also speaks prophetically of his own suffering.
By these words Saint James shows that the rich not only love to eat, become drunk, and feast, and are also possessed by all the other passions, as was said above. In addition, they unjustly condemn the innocent, making them guilty and liable to judgment.
They do this because they are wholly unconcerned about the future life, do not fear God, and do not keep the laws given by God. He commanded this in Exodus: “You shall keep away from every unjust word. You shall not kill the innocent and righteous” (Ex 23:7).
The author of Proverbs also says that those who do such things are unclean and hateful to God: “He who judges the righteous to be unrighteous, and the unrighteous to be righteous, is unclean and abominable to the Lord” (Prov 17:15).
Thus the prophet Daniel condemned one of those two elders, raging with the passion of fornication, who bore false witness against righteous Susanna. He said to them: “You have grown old in evil days.
Now your sins, which you committed before, have overtaken you, when you judged unjust judgments, condemning the innocent and acquitting the guilty, though God says: Do not kill the innocent and righteous” (Dan 13:52-53).
When the righteous man is condemned by you, he does not resist your judgment, because he is poor and powerless to do so. He leaves this judgment to God.
Saint Theophylact and Oecumenius understand the foregoing in this way: the Jews, being filled with injustices toward the poor, prepared themselves as if for slaughter by the Romans.
The Romans killed a countless multitude of Jews during the siege of Jerusalem. This was understood to be because they had killed the Righteous One of all the righteous, the innocent Jesus Christ.
He did not resist them during His Passion, but like a silent Lamb endured the precious Passion and the Cross.
Here there is a denunciation and condemnation of the rich, but not of all rich men or of every kind. Neither Christ nor His apostles preached equality of possessions among people, nor did they condemn wealth unconditionally.
The Apostle condemns to grievous miseries only those rich men who hoped that wealth, and not the mercy of God, could turn away from them the calamities of the days to come, “you have heaped up treasure in the last days” (v. 3).
He condemns those who withheld the wages of the workers who reaped their fields, so that the cries of the reapers reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth (v. 4).
He condemns those who lived in luxury on the earth and indulged themselves, fattening their hearts as animals are fattened for slaughter, “as in a day of slaughter” (v. 5).
He condemns those who condemned and killed the righteous man, though He did not resist them, and therefore deserved mercy all the more (v. 6).
Rich men for whom nothing is dear except their gold truly deserve strict condemnation.
The third sin of the rich is the persecution of the righteous man unto death, despite his innocence and meekness: “You have condemned,” and so forth.
On account of the turn of speech, some interpreters, Oecumenius and Theophylact, understand the righteous man to be the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Jews condemned and killed. But this interpretation does not have sufficient grounds.
The speech is addressed to the Jews in the dispersion (Jas 1:1), who did not participate in the condemnation and killing of the Lord. Moreover, it is addressed only to the rich.
If the killing of the Lord is represented in a general sense as the act of the whole Jewish people, the rich are no more guilty in this than the poor.
Furthermore, the connection of the speech does not favor such an interpretation. The word “does not resist you” decisively speaks against it.
In Russian it is inaccurately translated in the past tense, “did not resist.” Such a reading is not found in any of the ancient Greek manuscripts. In Slavonic it is correct: “does not resist.”
The singular in the word “righteous man” must here be taken in a general, collective sense, as below in Jas 5:16.
The meaning is this: you condemn, kill, or in general persecute and oppress righteous people. Despite their innocence, they do not resist this, because of their meekness.
The persecution and killing of righteous people simply because they are righteous is presented in Scripture as the highest sign of the moral corruption of the persecutors.
For such corrupt men, the very sight of a righteous man is hateful, though there is no fault in him. They savagely strive to wipe such a man from the face of the earth.
For a striking depiction of this, see the Wisdom of Solomon, Wis 2:12-20. The Apostle probably had this passage in mind.
“He does not resist”: he endures everything with meekness and humility, and even undergoes death without murmuring.
The use of the present tense is explained by the fact that the Apostle is not pointing here to one definite instance of condemnation and killing of a righteous man.
He points to the continuing actions of the rich toward righteous people, and contrasts such behavior of the righteous with those actions.
This third sin of the rich is still heavier than the first two. God’s judgment upon them for this will be fearful in the last days.
This must be understood from the connection of the Apostle’s speech, though because of its abruptness it is not directly stated.
Is it surprising that the Apostle ascribes the death of our Savior to rich men who please the flesh? As the Psalmist foretold, a multitude of calves surrounded Him (Ps 21:13).
And we know that, in fact, the chief accusers of Jesus Christ were powerful and notable men: the Pharisees and Sadducees, together with the scribes and chief priests.
Alluding to this, the Apostle reproves the rich for their oppressions of the poor, reaching even to sentences of death against people guilty of nothing.
By this they fill up the measure of their fathers, who handed over to death Him who was eternal Righteousness. Through this they become participants in their deeds.
All the more, because Jesus Christ said: “Inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me” (Mt 25:45).
They persecuted the apostles, who may be understood under the reapers. According to the testimony of the historian Eusebius, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, in those days when Christ the Savior had suffered, about three million Jews perished from the Romans.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 7 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS